Another strong impression made upon the visitor is, as I said, that the South has entirely put the past behind it, and is devoting itself to the work of rebuilding on new foundations. There is no reluctance to talk about the war, or to discuss its conduct and what might have been. But all this is historic. It engenders no heat. The mind of the South to-day is on the development of its resources, upon the rehabilitation of its affairs. I think it is rather more concerned about national prosperity than it is about the great problem of the negro—but I will refer to this further on. There goes with this interest in material development the same interest in the general prosperity of the country that exists at the North—the anxiety that the country should prosper, acquit itself well, and stand well with the other nations. There is, of course, a sectional feeling—as to tariff, as to internal improvements—but I do not think the Southern States are any more anxious to get things for themselves out of the Federal Government than the Northern States are. That the most extreme of Southern politicians have any sinister purpose (any more than any of the Northern “rings” on either side have) in wanting to “rule” the country, is, in my humble opinion, only a chimera evoked to make political capital. As to the absolute subsidence of hostile intention (this phrase I know will sound queer in the South), and the laying aside of bitterness for the past, are not necessary in the presence of a strong general impression, but they might be given in great number. I note one that was significant from its origin, remembering, what is well known, that women and clergymen are always the last to experience subsidence of hostile feeling after a civil war. On the Confederate Decoration Day in New Orleans I was standing near the Confederate monument in one of the cemeteries when the veterans marched in to decorate it. First came the veterans of the Army of Virginia, last those of the Army of Tennessee, and between them the veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic, Union soldiers now living in Louisiana. I stood beside a lady whose name, if I mentioned it, would be recognized as representative of a family which was as conspicuous, and did as much and lost as much, as any other in the war—a family that would be popularly supposed to cherish unrelenting feelings. As the veterans, some of them on crutches, many of them with empty sleeves, grouped themselves about the monument, we remarked upon the sight as a touching one, and I said: “I see you have no address on Decoration Day. At the North we still keep up the custom.”